1. Technical Field
This application relates to a bottling or container filling plant for filling containers, such as bottles, with a liquid beverage, and for closing filled containers. This application also relates to a beverage bottling plant for filling bottles with a liquid beverage filling material having a receiving table or unscrambling table or setup table or prep table for the container handling machines therein.
This application further relates to a device and/or a closing or capping machine employing a rotary construction for the capping of containers such as, for example, bottles or similar containers with screw tops or crown corks with a rotating carousel on which a plurality of container capping positions, each equipped with a capping element, are formed. Advantageous developments and other embodiments are described herein below.
2. Background Information
A beverage bottling plant for filling bottles with a liquid beverage filling material can possibly comprise a beverage filling machine with a plurality of beverage filling positions, each beverage filling position having a beverage filling device for filling bottles with liquid beverage filling material. The filling devices may have an apparatus designed to introduce a predetermined volume of liquid beverage filling material into the interior of bottles to a substantially predetermined level of liquid beverage filling material. The apparatus designed to introduce a predetermined flow of liquid beverage filling material further comprises an apparatus that is designed to terminate the filling of the beverage bottles upon the liquid beverage filling material reaching the predetermined level in bottles. There may also be provided a conveyer arrangement that is designed to move bottles, for example, from an inspecting machine to the filling machine. Upon filling, a closing station closes the filled bottles. There may further be provided a conveyer arrangement configured to transfer filled bottles from the filling machine to the closing station. Bottles may be labeled in a labeling station, the labeling station having a conveyer arrangement to receive bottles and to output bottles. The closing station and the labeling station may be connected by a corresponding conveyer arrangement.
Container handling machines are regularly used for the production of beverages in the beverage industry. These machines include, among other things, rinsers, fillers, cappers and labeling machines.
These handling machines can be linear machines, but they can also be rotary machines. Because both types of machines are amply described in prior art documents, there is no need to provide a more detailed description at this point. The accompanying figures show only rotary machines, although this is in no way intended to limit the scope of the present application to rotary machines.
The containers to be handled, e.g. bottles, cans or beverage cartons, to and from these container handling machines are generally fed to and removed from these container handling machines by means of single-track conveyors, whereby the containers are transferred between the conveyor and the handling machine or between the handling machine and the conveyor by means of inlet or outlet star wheels of the prior art.
It has been found to be altogether advantageous to combine the inlet and outlet star wheels and the elements for the mechanical connection of these star wheels with at least one of the container handling machines that is present into what is called a receiving table or an unscrambling table or a setup table or a prep table. Thereby additional elements, such as feed worms, housings or control elements of the container handling machines, can also be components of this receiving table.
Because such receiving tables, with all their attendant advantages, represent a significant cost factor on account of the complexity of their design and construction, and the constructions that are disclosed in the prior art had numerous individual surfaces, edges, corners and undercuts that offered starting points for undesirable contamination, multiple attempts have been made in the past to simplify and improve receiving tables with regard to their manufacture, costs and hygiene or cleaning.
Thus, for example, the unexamined German Patent Application DE 195 12 849 presents a variant of a receiving table in which the receiving table comprises essentially a flat, relatively thick metal plate which is oriented three-dimensionally at a specified angle with respect to the horizontal. This reference also teaches that spraying devices are provided on the higher edge of the metal plate and collecting gutters on the lower edge.
For the cleaning and/or disinfection of a device of this type, cleaning fluid is sprayed onto the metal plate by the sprayer devices. As a result of the inclined orientation of the metal plate there is a directed flow of the cleaning agent, by which any dirt or contamination that may adhere to the metal plate is supposed to be rinsed off.
One of several disadvantages of a device of this type is that the metal plates used require a large amount of material, and the mechanical processing of this material is complicated, time-consuming and expensive on account of the numerous borings that have to be introduced into these plates at specified angles.
DE 200 02 483 U1 describes another receiving table. This patent describes a receiving table that has an essentially rectangular base body, whereby this base body is provided with a superstructure in the shape of a hip roof made of sheet metal.
This hip-roof-shaped superstructure is in turn interrupted in the vertical plane by the mountings or receptacles for inlet or outlet star wheels, cappers etc.
Of course a receiving table of the type described in DE 200 02 483 U1 uses significantly less material compared to other realizations, although the fabrication of the hip-roof superstructure frequently poses technical difficulties.
DE 298 05 957 describes another configuration which attempts to reduce the number of components and areas present on receiving tables to the bare essentials. For example, receiving tables as described in DE 298 05 957 first comprise a base body which is assembled from elements in the shape of truncated cones, whereby these elements are connected by straight connecting pieces, the upper side of which has a gable-roof shape.
Such receiving tables also comprise conical and/or columnar elements which extend vertically upward starting from the base body and support devices on their upper end, such as transport star wheels, cappers, feed worms etc.
As a result of the configuration of a receiving table of this type, the manufacturing and cleaning during operation are simplified, and the associated costs are reduced accordingly. However, improvements can still be made in the amount of material required for the base body.
Capping machines, in particular those that employ a rotary construction, for the capping of containers such as bottles, for example, with screw caps or using crown corks are basically known from the prior art (U.S. Pat. No. 2,076,631). The caps that are used for screw-on closures can be made of metal (e.g. aluminum), for example, although they can preferably also be made of plastic. These plastic caps are prefabricated with an internal screw thread, by means of which, during the capping process, they are screwed onto the external screw thread that is provided on the mouth of the bottle and are screwed tight with a specified torque.
In one model that has been particularly popular in the past, a plurality of screwing units are provided in a rotor that is driven in rotation, the shaft of which is rotated in the conventional model by a pinion that sits on the shaft and runs along a gear rim that is fixed on the stator. The shaft, for its part, rotates the screw head to which the cap has previously been fed, conventionally engaged in a clamp. During the rotation of the rotor, the screwing units are moved downward one after the other by means of their height control system, which can consist, for example, of a non-rotating lifting cam, onto the bottle underneath, and the cap is thereby screwed onto the bottle.
There are also capping machines that close the containers with crown corks. To simplify the matter somewhat, crown cork and screw-cap closure machines differ essentially in that the screwing units are replaced by deformation units that deform the crown corks during the capping process so that the corks seal the containers airtight. In most cases, crown corking machines also have a central height adjustment that makes it possible to adjust the machine to different container heights.
One thing that most all capping machines have in common is that, essentially, the containers to be capped are delivered to a container inlet and the capped containers are removed at a counter outlet. The containers are delivered and removed by conveyor belts, and in some cases also by transfer star wheels.
Another thing that most all capping machines have in common is that they are located in geographic proximity to the filling machines, which are naturally upstream in terms of the process. In practice, preference is generally given to two variants. Initially, capping machines were frequently located on the setup table that is frequently associated with a filling machine. Alternatively, capping machines may be constructed in the form of free-standing machines, which may be connected, such as by using conveyor belts, to the upstream filling machine and the downstream components of the plant.
The realization of the drive system on capping machines of the prior art is also comparatively complicated and expensive. It is conventional, for example, to transmit the required drive power by means of a mechanical coupling with the corresponding filling machine directly from the filling machine to the capping machine. The components required for this transmission are complicated and expensive to manufacture and assemble.
Capping machines of the prior art located on setup tables or separate frames are also complicated, time-consuming and expensive to clean.
In addition, these types of capping machines are not suitable for use in the novel design of a setup table as described herein below.